Introduction

We are looking at John 13 and drawing out four themes—four pillars of a healthy community. The first week we looked at "Humble Leadership." Each healthy community centered around Jesus needs a team of leaders, who spend their power for the sake of others—out of a secure identity and out of a vision that outlasts their own survival. Without leadership you can't have a healthy community, and without a healthy, humble leader, the community won't be healthy. You need a leader that recognizes and is honest about their power, gets their identity from God, and spends their power for the life of the community.

The second week we looked at "Sturdy Grace," and we saw how each healthy community needs to move from what we called "single-serving grace," which is disposable for one or two instances of pain—once we've experienced frustration or conflict with a relationship we move on, we uproot ourselves. We saw how we needed to move to "sturdy grace," which is deeply rooted in the grace of Christ, and which sees God bring great fruit out of relational failure.

The third week we looked at "Personal Transformation," and we talked about how a healthy community is not huddled around each other's flaws, nor is a healthy community huddled around each other's affirmations, but a healthy community is huddled around the holy presence of God. This community encourages one another to gaze upon, look upon, focus on God's holiness, God's goodness, and in the process confess our sins, confess our flaws, and be changed into the likeness of Christ by the power of God.

Today we're looking at the final pillar, and that is the pillar of "Joyful Service." When we think about joyful service we have a default expectation, and that is that if we're going to have joy in our service, it's an equation. It's "reasonable comfort" plus "fulfilling work" equals "joyful service."

Reasonable comfort + fulfilling work = joy

Reasonable comfort is when we have all of our needs met. We need to have our need met, that's a legitimate human thing: to have needs and to have them be met. We need sleep. There have been studies recently, showing the link between mental health and a proper amount of sleep. We function better when we have that need met. When our blood sugar is at its proper level we're going to be nicer to people, we're less tempted to be grouchy. We've got a lot of needs, and I think a lot of us think, You know I can serve at my best when my needs are met. My social needs, my spiritual needs, my caffeine needs … when I've had enough down time, when I've had enough 'me' time, when my tank is generally full, I'm going to be at my best and I'm going to really give you something fresh. We like our needs to be met when we begin to serve other people.

A lot of us have taken those personality tests. We've taken the Myers-Briggs, Strengths Finder, and the Enneagram. We've got a really fine-tuned version of the ways that we really enjoy serving, but we also have dreams. We've thought about ways that we would really love to serve people, and really love to meet the needs of humanity. We really love to do fulfilling work, this is work that people praise. This is work that people say "Wait, you're a two, aren't you?" or, "You're a seven on the Enneagram, aren't you? I can see it! Because you're brilliant!" Once our needs are generally met, we're generally comfortable, and we're able to do fulfilling, engaging, and recognized work. The equation tells us when you take those two things together, that's joyful service.

I'm not discounting that equation as something that's bad. But if it's our only equation, it will limit us. It will limit our joy, and it will limit our service. Our delight and our joy will only be as deep as our comfort level. So if you take away the comfort, you take away the joy. The joy is kind of shallow, it's brittle. It's easily broken. Our delight is only as deep as how fulfilled we are in our work. So if our work doesn't feel fulfilling, then we can't take delight in that work. It shrinks the amount of tasks that you can do. It shrinks down the amount of needs that you can meet for other people, because unless it fits into the finely tuned set of tasks that you enjoy doing, there's no joy for you. If we stick to this equation, if this equation isn't challenged and stretched beyond the point of comfort, and beyond the point of satisfaction, we're going to be severely limited in our joy, and we're going to be severely limited in our service to other people.

A better equation

Jesus knew about a richer joy—a deeper joy. A joy that was more sturdy and durable. A joy that could ride the ups and the downs of how fulfilled we were, the ups and the downs of how comfortable we were. He wants, not for his own sake but for our own sake, to pass that on to us. He wants to give us his version of joyful service, which is beyond our definition of joyful service. He wants the church writ large to be pulsating with his deeper joy, with his passion to serve the needs of others. He doesn't want us to be limited by how satisfied we feel or how comfortable we are. He wants something only the Holy Spirit can give us, which is a deep, rich, abiding joy that is contagious.

So if our definition of joyful service is relative comfort plus fulfilling work, Jesus' definition of joyful service is this: exchanging your status for Jesus' status to meet the needs of others. Exchanging our status for Jesus' status, and in union with Christ, meeting the real needs of real people around us. When we can engage in that kind of joyful service, our joy will be deeper, richer, and more contagious than if we limit ourselves to our natural definitions of joyful service.

Look at verse four. Jesus was gathering with his disciples right before he died, and I imagine that his disciples were filled with fear and uncertainty. I'm sure that Jesus was filled with all kinds of emotions; he had a betrayer in his midst, he had disciples that couldn't understand his message, but Jesus was not constrained by his emotional state. Jesus was not limited by his status either. It says in verse four that he rose from supper, laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Jesus took on the form of a servant, and put on the clothes of a servant, and in doing so communicated to his disciples, "I don't outrank you. I'm here to serve you. I'm actually going to take on the form of a servant because that is going to give me the freedom to serve you."

Jesus is actually offering to us the opportunity to exercise the same freedom. He says, in verse 16, "Truly truly I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master. Nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him." What he's saying is "Hey look, I put on the clothes of a servant, and that gave me the freedom to do the work of a servant, to meet the real needs of my disciples, and you're no greater than I am. This is actually not just for me to be doing: you get to lay aside your status, and take on my status."

Jesus was also picturing what he would do on the cross. He would be stripped of his clothes, stripped of his dignity, and he would open wide his arms of love in complete vulnerability, to love us who have no dignity. He gave us the dignity, the robes of righteousness, and he exchanged his glory for our sin. Jesus is offering to us—as we receive his love, as we receive his righteousness—the opportunity to take on the role of a servant. But unless we exchange our status for his status, unless we let go of the status we've held on to, we cannot engage in this work of joyful service with Jesus.

Becoming a servant to meet real needs

I think for us, our status a lot of times is tied up in the people we associate with, the circles that we run in. Who are we willing to be seen with? What parties we go to? What invitations we accept, and what invitations we ignore? Who are the people that you want to be known as friends with? Who are the people that you want to be tied to? Are there people whose friendship you've ignored, or whose presence you've avoided, because you know that if you're seen with them and associate with them, it will lower your rank in the eyes of others? It's a temptation for all of us: to want to associate with the highest status people we have access to, and avoid the lower status people who we feel are trying to leech off our status. Jesus laid aside his status, and he associated with the lowest of the low. He associated with people who had nothing to offer him. He was incredibly kind, and gave all of himself to people who had nothing to offer him.

I think for some of us, there are just certain things that we don't do. There are certain jobs that we have graduated from. We think, Verse 16 doesn't quite apply to me because there are certain things that I don't do. I don't do dirty diapers. I don't do bodily fluids. Or maybe you had a low status job at one point in your life, and you feel like you've moved on from that low status job. You think, I've graduated to these kinds of jobs that are fulfilling and that are also full of dignity. I won't go back to those jobs that I once did. Jesus is inviting us to be free from that. To exchange our very brittle identity, our very brittle status, in exchange for his status. That is the status of a servant who is honored in the eyes of God. So we go down with Jesus. We don't graduate above Jesus.

Not only do we exchange our status for Jesus's status, we love real people by meeting their real needs. Now Jesus was observant, and he could see the actual needs of the gathering of people. He could see that there is a group of people here, whose feet are so dirty and so smelly, that if someone doesn't clean them, they can't stay in the same room together. It's such an intense need, and he lowers himself and meets this actual need. He took actual feet into his hands, and he took actual water, and he scrubbed away the actual smell and the actual dirt.

I think there's a challenge for us to move beyond the idea of humanity, and the idea of love, to actual people with actual needs, and meeting those actual needs. This involves listening: moving from our fantasies of what people need to asking questions and listening, "What do you actually need? What is actually going on in your life? What is your deficit, and how can I actually meet you where you are?"

Shane Claibourne once said "Everybody wants a revolution, but nobody wants to do the dishes. Community is about doing the dishes." We love doing revolutionary things, we love doing dramatic things. We love feeling needed. So we want to change the world in shocking ways, in deep ways, in meaningful ways. In the process of getting to these shocking, amazing, headline grabbing ways of changing the world, we miss the basics. We miss the basic ways people need to be loved. We miss the basic ways people need care. We miss the basic needs right in front of us, because they aren't attention grabbing enough. They're so prosaic; they're so real, that we miss them. So we're not free to do the things that are mundane. We're not free to do the things that are real. We're not free to meet physical needs, we're not free to meet the needs right in front of us.

An invitation to shared activity

Ministry in the name of Jesus is meeting the needs of others whether or not your needs are met, whether or not you feel overqualified or under qualified. Many times when we obey Jesus, when we press into his service; he'll give us jobs that feel way beyond us, that feel way beyond our capacity. Sometimes he'll give us needs that feel way beneath us, way beneath our capacity. He defines what we're capable of doing and what we're not capable of doing.

Usually, the way we find out what he wants us to do is by simply observing what the needs are, and by pressing in whether or not it fits our Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, or whether or not it's recognized. Ministry in the name of Jesus is laying aside our status, receiving his status of being a servant honored in the eyes of God, and meeting the needs that are right in front of us. We cannot do this if we're simply trying hard. This is an invitation from Christ to share in union with him. Look at verses 13 and 14. Jesus says to his disciples and to us, "Do you understand what I have done for you? You call me teacher and Lord, for you are right, for so I am. If I then your Lord and your Teacher—if I then your Rabbi and your Kyrios—have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet."

One of my favorite things to do as a father is include my children in on activities that I've learned how to do as an adult. Not too long ago I had to change the tube on my bike, and I took Sam outside with me, my five year old, and I gave him things to do, I gave him a way to help me. I could see the joy and delight in his face. I felt joy and delight as well. We were bonded together in that shared activity.

When Jesus invites us into joyful service, he's not cracking the whip, he's inviting us to change the tire with him. He's inviting us into shared activity, because it's a way for us to be united with our Savior. It's a way for us to understand what it's like to be him. It's a way for us to receive his life. When we serve with him in ways that are recognized and ways that are not recognized we are celebrating what Jesus has done for us. How he completes us, saves us, and renews us and the world through his death and resurrection.

I'm constantly motivated by this challenge from Jesus. Most of the time it's through my children. There are times when I don't feel like I've had enough sleep, but there is a crying child. So before my tank is full, there's a real need right in front of me. It's not a need that's going to be recognized but that cry from my child is in some ways a call from Jesus: "Aaron, you can in freedom rise from your bed, even in your pre-caffeinated state, and you can meet a real need right in front of you. A need involving body fluids, a need involving someone else needing to eat, someone else needing comfort, someone else who needs care. Aaron you have the freedom to do this before you feel comfortable, before your needs are met." There's a great freedom in following Jesus before our needs are met, by doing something where we're not recognized.

Conclusion

When people come together for the purpose of having their needs met, for the purpose of receiving benefits, it can be sometimes like leeches coming together, with the expectation that they're going to fulfilled. When that happens—some of you work in retail you've seen this happen—there's a lot of frustration and anger. Jesus is calling us to a joy that's deeper than having our needs met, deeper than benefits, deeper than being comfortable, deeper than doing something meaningful. He's calling us to be like a bundle of logs, bound together, set ablaze for the life of the world. Our energy is being burned up freely, with joy, for the sake of others. Sometimes it's doing things that are meaningful and recognized, and sometimes it's doing things that aren't meaningful or recognized in any way. But that's what God's call is, and the only way that we can live up to that call is by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Aaron Damiani is the pastor of Immanuel Anglican Church, a church plant in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of The Good of Giving Up: Discovering the Freedom of Lent.